Jürgen Habermas

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929–) was born outside of Düsseldorf, Germany, and came of age at the tail end of World War II. He is the most prominent philosopher in the second generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, a tradition founded by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. However, Habermas rejected Horkheimer and Adorno’s claim that the Enlightenment’s model of rationality—with its focus on the technical control of the world to serve subjective ends—is inherently wedded to domination. From his early career, Habermas has strongly challenged those who would either relativize rationality or dispute its emancipatory potential. Apart from belief in scientific progress, he also believes there are “social learning processes” that yield progress in ethical, political, and legal systems. He has been consistently productive over five decades, articulating philosophical theories of human rationality, linguistic meaning, truth, ethics, deliberative democracy, and legal legitimacy. He is also a prominent public intellectual who weighs in on contested social issues—both in debates with other academics and in op-eds. He has authored several books that have impacted not only philosophy but also the social sciences more broadly as well as political theory. Some of his most notable works include The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Theory of Communicative Action (two volumes); Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action; and Between Facts and Norms.